or the scribbling of the justice. Alas for the guilty wretch! She is banished henceforth from respectable, decent society. Even the innocent child, the result of her error, bears a stain from which it can not cleanse itself its whole life long. Theft is also forbidden by the community; but the judge has sometimes compassion upon the thief if he stole bread when he was starving, and lets him go unpunished. This is a concession by society of the fact that one's hunger at times may be stronger than one's respect of the law. But it makes no concessions to the wife who has loved notwithstanding her marriage vows, or to the girl who has loved without any marriage vows. It accepts no excuse for any violation of the laws with which it has regulated the intercourse of the sexes. It will not perceive that love as well as hunger is a sufficient cause to break the bonds of the written law. Are we not obliged to believe that this law, this system of morality, is the invention of scorified and calcinated old men or of eunuchs? Is it possible that society has been governed by these views of morality for centuries, a society in which the old men and eunuchs are in the minority, while it always contains many young men of twenty four and maidens of twenty? Governed—ah, there it is—society is not governed by these ideas! It has contrived a way to reconcile the inhuman laws and heartless customs with human nature, by pretending great respect and decorum before their faces, but cutting all sorts of capers behind their backs. Its non-recognition of love is a fraud. It takes off its hat in the presence of the judge who sentences the adulteress to prison, or of the severe mistress who sends away her servant who has been betrayed; but it claps applause to the poet who sings of love without even mentioning marriage, until its very palms ache. Every one in public assents unctuously to the proposition that it is a
